


The Fear of Falling Apart

by theramblingnerd



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Depression, I'm adding tags as I go, References to Depression, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, and the first fic i've written in a few years, this is my first fic here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-27 06:29:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theramblingnerd/pseuds/theramblingnerd
Summary: Bruce Banner moves into Stark/Avengers Tower following the Battle of New York. Tony Stark doesn't know how to cope with the aftermath of the Chitauri Invasion, he overworks himself and "gets low." He and Bruce realize just how alike they are and we see different times in Tony's life where he's given up or felt helpless.I want to incorporate Tony and Rhodey's friendship, so I may add in some flashbacks or references to IM1&2 or possibly the MIT days in later chapters?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written in a few years, forgive me if the writing is weird. This first chapter takes place during the shawarma scene and after the Avengers go their separate ways, nothing too dark, basically just Bruce's train of thought getting away from him during the conversation.

             After the Battle of New York, Bruce had found himself eating shawarma with five larger than life heroes and trying – and failing – not to think about the fact that the Hulk had been unleashed on New York City again. Obviously the alternative would have been worse. Had he stood by and watched his new friends fight the alien invaders without intervening more lives would have been lost, more damage would have been done, Tony might not have survived that plummet back through the wormhole. It was as if the other man could read his mind. Tony was snapping his fingers in front of Bruce’s glazed over eyes in an effort to break his train of thought and get his attention.

            “So kind of you to join us Dr. Jekyll, I don’t think we’ve got it in us to fight off Hyde if he makes another appearance today,” Tony quipped, “As I was saying if any of you need a place to stay, you’re welcome to head to the tower with me afterwards. Pepper and I will need to work on the plans to reconstruct the damaged floors, but the thing is nearly 100 stories high so I’m sure we’ll be able to find some usable space for you all.”

            He let the proposition hang in the air for a moment before winking at Natasha, “What do you say Kim Possible? Katniss?” Clint and Natasha looked at each other, silently conferring. Natasha spoke for the both of them, “We’ve got safe houses all over the world, Tony. It’s a very generous offer, but I don’t think it wise for us to stay in the public eye right now. It’s likely that people will blame us and SHIELD for what happened today; they’ll probably question why spies and assassins were part of the team defending the city.”

            Tony let out a sigh and nodded, realizing that she was right, “Your thoughts, Mister Rogers?”

            Steve looked uneasy when he replied, “The world just found out I’m back a few days ago, Stark. New York’s my home, but I’d feel vulnerable here with all these eyes on me. I’m thinking I might head upstate for a while, I hear it’s peaceful.”

            Thor spoke up next, “Stark, you honor us with your humble invitation. It is evident that you want to care for us, even as we should be caring for you now. You are lucky to be alive, many mortals would not have had the strength to do what you have done today and yet you stand ready to serve again mere hours after your fall from the portal. Perhaps in the days to come I will be able to visit you in your tower, but for now I must return to Asgard. The All Father has bid me to return and I must see that Loki faces punishment equal to his crimes.”

            “Can’t argue with that, MC Hammer. Banner, I’m guessing you’re heading back to India? Well the invitation stands either way, if any of you need anything don’t hesitate to get in touch or stop by. I guess we’re a team now, so I’ll do what I can to help if you need it.”

            Bruce thought about the years he’d spent running from the Army. He thought about that time in The Bronx. Those years spent hiding out in rural, developing countries had brought him to a level of peace he hadn’t previously known. He came to control the Hulk while helping others and he wouldn’t trade that time for anything, but he wasn’t sure that he could run away and hide again after everything he and the other Avengers, his teammates, had been through during the short time since they’d been brought together. He thought about what it would be like to work in a proper laboratory again, and he was certain that Tony Stark would have a lab in his tower. He interrupted Tony who had now offered to pay to fly any of the Midgardian Avengers to whatever destinations they had in mind, “Actually Tony, I might take you up on that – for a little while at least. If you’re not too busy running a company I’ve got some experiments planned out that I could use some help with.”

            The engineer grinned, “Sounds like fun, Green Bean.”         

______________________________________________________________________________

The first few weeks after the Battle were uneventful for Bruce. He watched as Tony worked – seemingly tirelessly – reconstructing parts of the tower, conducting conference calls with his board of directors, dealing with SHIELD, assisting Damage Control with the efforts to clean up the debris and destruction left over, working on new suits, and doing lab work with himself.

            Bruce was equally impressed with Pepper, he figured it must take a very patient woman to put up with Tony Stark and he had been right, but she was also brilliant and after taking a couple of days to process the shock of the invasion, make sure that her boyfriend was okay, and start the tower repair plans she flew back to L.A. to keep a closer eye on Stark Industries. When she left Bruce stared, wide-eyed at Tony and hoped that the expression conveyed just how impressive he thought Ms. Potts was. Stark just sighed, “She’s incredible, I know,” before moving on to the next thing on his infinite to-do list.

            And Bruce was content to live in the massive, high-tech tower with his new friend and teammate. They didn’t interact much outside of the lab because Tony was staying so busy. In fact Bruce called into question whether or not the other man was sleeping at all, but he brushed that small worry aside and decided that a genius like Tony Stark ought to know when he needs to rest and that a man as influential as Tony Stark could make the world wait if he needed to take a break before reengaging with it. The physicist didn’t notice the symptoms at first because the presentation of Stark’s symptoms was so very different from his own.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruce is settling into the Tower, Tony is overworking himself, again nothing terribly dark in this chapter, but Bruce does find Tony in bad shape towards the end. I'm gonna go more into both of their ~feelings~ in chapter 3

It was a month before Bruce realized what had been going on right under his nose, and he was almost too late to stop it. After spending so long hiding out in the more rural parts of the world, he was finding it difficult to adjust to having JARVIS around to answer his questions and help him out with whatever project he might be working on. The scientist had wandered around the tower for roughly an hour after waking up. He was looking for Tony and couldn’t seem to find him anywhere. He felt a bit silly when he asked, “Uh – hey JARVIS, where’s Tony?”

If it was possible, JARVIS’s voice seemed strained when he replied, “Sir is in his workshop and has disabled me from interfacing with that particular room; he may require assistance Dr. Banner.” 

Bruce was puzzled by this, why would Stark lock his own AI out of his workshop if he needed assistance? The engineer typically interacted with JARVIS as if he were a human being, present in the room with him. He carried on conversations with the disembodied voice as if it were a friend and/or lab partner at times. Something about the situation seemed off to Bruce as he headed to the mechanic’s workshop, so he walked a bit faster than he normally would.

He didn’t have a clearance code to enter the workshop and his handprint wasn’t coded to the scanner by the door, so Bruce wasn’t sure he’d even be able to get in without breaking something. When he arrived outside the workshop; however, it became clear that this wouldn’t be an issue. By locking JARVIS out of the room, Tony had disabled the tech that locked physical entities out of the room. The normally clear glass windows and door to the workshop were tinted and Bruce suddenly felt his heart drop, something was definitely not right here.

The door was ajar and he pushed it gingerly open, the room was dark without overhead lighting or computer monitors aglow and it took Bruce a moment to spot his friend. Tony lay sleeping on a ratty old couch. The man looked pale, even from across the room and Bruce spotted a trash can sitting next to the sofa. He crossed the room thinking that the man must have gotten sick; spent the night sleeping on the couch with the trash can nearby in case he needed to vomit. As he drew nearer he thought, I’ll have to see what I can do to keep him from overworking himself like this. 

A blue glow was coming from the trash though, and that couldn’t be right – his pace quickened and he dropped to his knees beside the couch where Tony was sprawled. The miniaturized arc reactor sat in the trash beneath some crumpled balls of paper and the genius was drenched in sweat. His eyes were open, glassy, and unmoving. Bruce lifted the glowing device keeping his hands as steady as possible while figuring out how to quickly reinsert it. The man’s pulse was sluggish and breathing was shallow. Bruce knew that the other man’s heart wouldn’t last long without the reactor, so he attached the wire to the port inside of Tony’s chest and clicked the device into place. Tony gasped loudly as he regained his breath and Bruce remembered that Tony’s AI knew more about him than most people. He ran back to the door and wrenched it open, “JARVIS,” he shouted, “The arc reactor was removed! How do I help him?” 

The AI didn’t respond immediately, but lights and power surged back into the room. JARVIS’s protocols required him to protect his creator, so Bruce’s shout for help allowed the program to override Tony’s previous command to completely black out the workshop. 

Bruce breathed a shaky sigh of relief, sure that JARVIS would be able to help him provide the medical care Tony needed. The physicist had practiced medicine during his time on the run, but he didn’t completely trust himself to know how to handle the arc reactor or the rearranged bones and organs in Tony’s chest, Bruce would be fascinated to learn more about how his teammates bodily functions differed from a typical patient if he weren’t so terrified in that moment.

He knelt again at his teammate’s side and as calmly as he could asked, “Tony, what happened?”  
Tony, still pallid, drew a shuddering breath and simply said, “I got low, Dr. Banner. You understand how that can be, right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time we see what happened through Tony's eyes and get a closer look at what's going on leading up to him taking the arc reactor out.

   
Tony had done everything he could to keep himself from mentally reliving that day. The Battle of New York they were calling it. He kept himself busy which wasn’t hard to do. He became more involved with Stark Industries than he had been since Afghanistan, he worked on redesigning the tower to better accommodate the other Avengers, he rebuilt his suit and built new suits, he played in the lab with Banner, he helped the government clean up the mess he helped make, he did everything he could to avoid sleeping.

That day he had eaten his shawarma and slept soundly by Pepper’s side during the night; the following day he helped Bruce get settled in and he turned in early while Pepper was packing for her return trip to L.A. She needed to get back to Stark Industries and Tony still hadn’t recovered physically from the previous day’s fight. Turns out he hadn’t recovered mentally either. He dreamed about the Chitauri and the portal and the nuke and the screams and the bodies. He kept falling and falling and falling and falling. 

When he jerked awake, he was breathing heavily and sweating profusely. He got up and quickly changed into different shirt and shorts before climbing back into bed and pretending that he was asleep until Pepper had come to bed and he was sure that she had drifted to sleep herself. After that he slid out of bed, padded to the kitchen, and with shaking hands made himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t want to worry her with this when she needed to be handling her duties as CEO of Stark Industries, so he acted as natural as he could up until her flight left and didn’t breathe a word about the nightmare.

He noted that Bruce had already come to appreciate the brilliance of Pepper Potts in the short time that the two had simultaneously been in the Tower and he acknowledged that he shared the sentiment that she was an incredible woman. Tony told the physicist that he’d be in his workshop the rest of the day and that he could have JARVIS call him into the lab Bruce would be using if he needed any help with his work that day.

Bruce seemed satisfied with that and went to see what scientific treasures the lab held. Tony briefly thought that the man must have missed out on conducting research and experiments while on the run from the U.S. Government and he hoped that Bruce would enjoy the tech in the lab after spending so much time without access to decent equipment. Tony then headed to his lab where he opened up a hidden mini bar and began to drink from the first bottle he could reach. It was only 10:00 am, but he’d been up for seven hours already; the imagery from his nightmare still swam before his eyes. Bruce didn’t call for him all day, so he was able to hide out in the workshop for several hours. 

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about the sleep situation. Of course he acknowledged that he physically needed sleep, but he hadn’t had nightmares this bad – even after the cave. Maybe he could talk to Rhodey later, Rhodey had always known how to make Tony feel better, even when they were at MIT. Tony decided he’d have to keep himself as busy as possible to avoid thinking about the battle. Maybe if he exhausted himself he could get back to that same blackout sleep he had miraculously managed immediately after falling out of that wormhole.

A few weeks went by and Tony did talk to Rhodey – just not about the nightmares – he decided it would be selfish of him to worry his best and oldest friend with something so trivial when the military was putting so much extra pressure on the Colonel following the invasion. They wanted to be sure they’d be ready if when the aliens came back for round two. He told the pilot that he was recovering from the physical toll that the battle had taken on his body and that he was getting back to work on some important projects for S.I.  
It was a lie by omission and one that Tony felt was in Rhodey’s best interest. He was still physically exhausted and he was working on some projects with Pepper, but his mind was not his own in the days following the battle. He even ran some tests for residual traces of the energy from Loki’s scepter, thinking that his mind might have been affected after all. There was no residual energy though, the nightmares were all Tony, and he couldn’t blame Reindeer Games for the pitfalls of his own mind. 

So rather than talk to Rhodey or Pepper, Tony kept wandering about his Tower. He would occasionally work with Bruce in the lab, but other than that he kept to himself. The mechanic was nearly constantly alternating between drinking coffee and scotch to keep himself awake and to prevent his mind from completely getting away from him.

This wasn’t the first time Tony Stark had gone without sleep and it wasn’t likely to be the last. From the time that he had woken up from that first nightmare to the time that he finally had to give in to his body’s physical limitations and shut his eyes for a few minutes, Tony had been awake for seventy-six hours and twenty minutes. He was staring at a proposal Stark Industries had received from Microsoft and the words blurred before his eyes, he didn’t trust himself to work on his suits right now, and he definitely did not want to go upstairs to see what Bruce was up to while he was in this state. Tony glanced at the clock on the wall and wondered how much longer he could put off sleeping. 

_“Sir, the longest recorded time without sleep is roughly eleven days. However I would not recommend that you attempt to break or match this record as psychosis and hallucinations often occur after three to four days without sleep.”_

JARVIS’s response surprised Tony, he hadn’t realized that he’d spoken aloud. Sometimes he hated JARVIS’s rationality. He hadn’t yet been able to make JARVIS understand human emotion and behavior. The AI had learned a lot from years of observing Tony, but he still had a mechanical rationale. Unfortunately that rationale was correct. Tony felt like he’d been playing a game of chicken with sleep and nightmares; he was definitely suffering the consequences. He closed the document he’d been attempting to read and reluctantly flopped down on the couch he kept in his workshop for times like these – after all the Battle of New York was hardly his first traumatic experience.

“Hey J, wake me up in an hour?”

_“Of course, sir.”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is one of Tony's nightmares, they basically all come across as versions of this but with slight variations.

He was back in space, only this time he wasn’t alone. The team, the Avengers, was there with him in some kind of rocket. He didn’t know where they were going, Cap was piloting the ship while Thor entertained himself exploring the unfamiliar, Midgardian spacecraft. Banner was following him around, attempting to explain the technology and Thor seemed to be trying to make Bruce understand how Asgardians had achieved space travel. If Romanoff was afraid she didn’t show it. Barton didn’t seem capable of speech, he was gazing out a window, mouth slightly agape. Tony walked to the archer’s side, curious to see what had his teammate in this state.

The Chitauri command center that he’d destroyed was reforming. There were large pieces that had been blown apart – by the nuke? – floating through the vacuum and knitting themselves back together. Those freaky, impenetrable Leviathan things were circling around the ship while Chitauri soldiers calmly watched their ship take its original shape. 

Rogers flipped a switch in the cockpit and turned to face the team, “We’ve fought these guys before. They had the element of surprise the last time around, but this time we’re taking the fight to them in case they decide to attack Earth again. We don’t have the resources to be everywhere at once, or to prevent the kind of damage that happened last time which is all the more reason to do this here.”

With a smirk, Romanoff added, “This way if we fail or die, no one else will get hurt. It’ll just be the six of us, no collateral damage this time.”

Hawkeye chuckled darkly at that and Thor made to raise Mjolnir, but before the team could launch whatever attack they had planned, their spaceship vanished, leaving them floating through the emptiness of space. Rogers and Thor looked shocked, the SHIELD agents’ bodies were already icing over, and Bruce appeared to be hulking out in slow motion. Tony glanced down at his own body to see that he was in the Mark III suit. 

The cold vacuum had killed Barton and Romanoff almost instantly and was already affecting Banner and Rogers too. They were genetically modified, but still human enough to die it seemed. Tony watched, paralyzed, as the life drained from their bodies, even Thor seemed unable to do anything to save himself from the vast nothingness. 

As Tony was forced to watch his new teammates suffer their fate, he could spare no time on mourning them. The Chitauri ship was almost whole and those vile creatures had turned their attention to him. He looked helplessly at his dead and dying friends – yes he thought of them as friends he decided – and their bodies vanished as the spaceship had done previously. Whatever had caused Tony’s temporary paralysis was gone now, his limbs unlocked and he flew straight towards the ship. There was no portal for him to fall through this time, no nuke to launch at the invaders. He knew he was defeated before he started the fight, but he fought anyways. 

Tony quickly discovered that the suit was malfunctioning, the repulsors were functioning, but JARVIS and his additional weapons were offline. He could punch, kick, and blast the Chitauri but that alone wouldn’t do much damage. He had injured the first three or four of them that had approached him and quickly been overwhelmed by the sheer number of the monsters. They began to tear at his armor, leaving him defenseless. There were so many on top of him, pressing in on all sides. He couldn’t see the stars anymore, he wondered whether he would asphyxiate or if they would have time to rip him apart before the lack of oxygen killed him. It was completely dark when out of nowhere, a streak of bright blue not unlike the light the arc reactor gave off whipped through the air and wrapped tightly around his throat.

The genius inventor found himself now onboard the alien spaceship and facing none other than Ivan Vanko. The other man was somehow anchored to the floor of the ship while Tony floated in zero gravity, the electrical whip burning and choking him. Vanko stared up at Tony; his eyes had gone completely black like the ones Loki had enslaved with that scepter. Loki himself appeared from the darkness, wearing his helmet and brandishing his scepter. Neither he nor Vanko spoke, but they both had unsettling grins plastered across their faces. Silver tongue beckoned to another minion waiting in the darkness, Justin Hammer. Hammer had the same black eyes as Vanko. He approached Tony and yanked his leg, not grounding him just pulling him closer to the ground. Tony had initially thought that Vanko would kill him by electrocuting him with his whips, but somehow the one around his throat hadn’t done him in yet. It still burned into his flesh and kept him from running, but it felt more like a leash than a hangman’s noose now. Hammer restrained Tony’s hands with handcuffs that seemed to be made of the same stuff as Vanko’s whips. 

Loki watched as Tony winced, his wrists and neck both burning beneath his electric restraints. The Asgardian raised his hand again; Vanko and Hammer flanked Tony who was now levitating between them. He could now see that the Chitauri were still present, forming a ring around himself and his three enemies. The alien invaders parted to allow another man to enter the chamber.

Obadiah Stane crossed the room in grand strides, his eyes were the same obsidian color as the rest. Tony tried not to make a sound, but he audibly whimpered when the man planted himself in front of him. Stane grabbed a handful of Tony’s hair and dragged him forward, against his restraints. Tony’s feet touched the ground and he realized that Stane was a much larger man than himself. He looked up at his former father figure as the man removed the arc reactor from his chest. Obadiah pocketed the device and took the leash/whip from Vanko’s hand. He dragged Tony across the room and through the crowd of Chitauri that had loomed, watching the events unfold from a distance. Stane opened a door that Tony hadn’t previously been able to see and pulled him into the next room. Loki, Vanko, and Hammer followed. The four antagonists seemed to know what was coming, they had a shared glint of anticipation in their eyes.

Stane forced Tony onto a cold, metal gurney and locked more restraints like the one around his throat and wrists onto his ankles and waist. The genius couldn’t figure out how he was still breathing when his arc reactor was in Obadiah’s pocket and electricity was surging through his body and burning his flesh, not to mention the fact that he was in space without his suits. 

He struggled to connect these thoughts as he felt a stronger surge come through his restraints as the Chitauri reentered his field of vision, followed by Abu Bakar and Raza of the Ten Rings. They too seemed to have been enslaved by Loki and they seemed to be happy to have regained their former prisoner. The walls around them morphed from sterile looking, metal to the rocky cave walls Tony still remembered all too well. The Chitauri and Tony’s other enemies remained, but the room around them now looked exactly like that cave in Afghanistan. This time there was no Yinsen and Rhodey would never be able to find Tony if he couldn’t escape. This time Tony was without his tools and faced the things he feared the most. He would not overcome them this time. Loki stepped forward and leaned over Tony. He raised his scepter to the empty arc reactor casing and plunged it into Tony’s chest, cutting the casing free from Tony’s chest.

Tony Stark lay in the cave in Afghanistan, surrounded by alien invaders and the enemies he had fought and defeated since becoming Iron Man. He had watched his teammates die and saw no way that he could fight this battle alone. His chest was empty of the thing that had kept him alive for the past four years and his restraints seemed to be tightening and letting lose stronger surges of electricity the longer he laid there, vulnerable.

Just when he thought he might pass out from the pain and fear he was experiencing, the metal door clicked open and one more man that Tony feared entered the room. His father, Howard Stark stood in the doorway of Tony’s prison. He looked at his son with disgust, it was a look that Tony was quite familiar with, the only difference this time was the eyes. The Chitauri, Loki, Hammer, Vanko, Raza, and Obadiah let Howard pass through their ranks until Howard stood directly over Tony, still pinned onto the operating table/gurney. Howard shoved his hands deep into the deep cavity in Tony’s chest and the man held Tony’s beating heart in front of his face.

Howard chuckled, “Looks like we’ve finally solved the riddle of your heart, boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Essentially Tony is reliving all of his worst fears in this dream and can't see how he's going to get out/overcome them when they start to gang up on him and overwhelm him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony's reeling after waking from another nightmare. In case it's not clear this is the beginning of what gets him in the state Bruce discovered him in Chapter 2.

            Tony woke with a shout. He was thankful that Stark Tower was such a large building, neither Bruce nor any of the employees who might be wandering the corridors were likely to be in this part of the building. He was also thankful that he had soundproofed his workshop on the off chance that someone could have been near enough to hear. The only people who currently had clearance to enter the room besides himself were Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy.

            Panting as he sat up on the couch, Tony reminded himself that he had dozed off there and that he certainly hadn’t been transported to Afghanistan or the depths of outer space. He reminded himself that the other members of the Avengers team had gone their separate ways earlier in the week, but that they had promised to contact one another if any one of them found themselves in a situation that couldn’t be handled without help. Tony Stark was a smart man, if he had really wanted to, he could mentally calculate the probability of another alien invasion occurring within less than a week of the Chitauri invasion. He didn’t bother, logically he knew that the odds were miniscule. Just like he knew the odds of the Ten Rings hunting him back down and successfully kidnapping him and holding him hostage again were infinitesimal. Yet these things still weighed on his mind.

            His heart was still pounding, but Tony had regained his breath and some sense of where he was. His t-shirt was soaked through with sweat, so he peeled it off before standing and crossing to the other side of his workshop. He stood at the sink and splashed some cold water in his face, shook his head, and headed upstairs to grab a fresh shirt.

            “JARVIS?” He called out, “How long did I sleep?”

            _“Approximately four hours, sir. My safety protocols allowed me to override your request since your sleep deprivation could be considered harmful to your health.”_

            “Okay, buddy,” Tony responded, he was too shaken by the nightmare to care that his AI had gone against his commands.

            His father’s voice still rang in his ears as he ascended the stairs. Howard had been the only person to speak directly to Tony in the dream, but he had quoted something Fury had said to Tony two years prior – or rather Howard had twisted Fury’s words. Back in 2010, Tony had been dying of Palladium poisoning and Fury had told him he was the only one who could solve the riddle of his own heart. Fury had also told Tony that his father had loved him, but even if the man was a superspy what gave him the right to act as if he knew what had gone on in the Stark household? Tony knew that his father was averse to any kind of unwanted attention, and Fury was to be believed, Howard had helped found SHIELD. If anyone could evade Fury’s watchful eye it would be a cofounder of the organization. Now two years after that bizarre pep talk from Fury and just over twenty years after Howard’s death, the man appeared in Tony’s dreams and ripped his very heart from his chest.

            The solution to the riddle was to remove his heart, to stop his heart? That sounded more like the Howard Tony remembered.

            As Tony reached the floor he’d been climbing to (he’d taken the stairs to give himself more time to think and calm himself) he asked JARVIS if anyone was between him and his bedroom.

            _“No sir, the path is clear.”_

            He strode deliberately out of the stairwell and into the main hallway, keeping his composure as best he could. It was only a dream after all.

            Stepping inside his private quarters, Tony couldn’t help but think about how helpless he had felt once the spacecraft had transformed into the cave around him. Those three months in captivity had been the worst months of his life, and that was saying something. He was reborn in that cave and he had grown so much in the four years since his escape, though he had had some minor setbacks during that time.

Before the cave Tony had lived in Howard’s shadow, he put up walls and wore a mask even before had become Iron Man. Almost no one knew about the abuse he had received from his father or the apathy that his mother had displayed towards the situation. Tony had shielded himself from being treated that way by any other human being the best way he knew how. For a period after Jarvis’s death his solution had been drugs. After he underwent rehab (he’d paid the facility to keep his presence quiet) he turned to women and the bottle. As much as he hated the similarities between himself and Howard, he wouldn’t deny that they shared the alcoholic gene nor that they had both been horrible towards the women in their lives.

            After the cave Tony had come into his own. He lost Yinsen in the process, but he strengthened his friendship with Rhodey, he began his relationship with Pepper, and he stood up for what he thought was right. He couldn’t believe he’d wasted so many years running the company the way he thought his father would have liked him to. It was his company now and he’d run it into the ground if he saw fit. When he came out of that cave, it ultimately put him on a path that led to the Avengers. He was honestly proud of how far he’d come and Tony didn’t want to let Howard control him now after all he’d done to overcome the man’s lasting impact on his life.

            He dreaded what would come next for the Avengers, things couldn’t get worse could they? At that thought he shook his head again, temporarily snapping himself out of whatever worried trance he’d been in. Tony changed his shirt and walked back out of the room. If JARVIS said he could go three days without seeing major side effects from sleep deprivation, he’d do that. Tony Stark wasn’t thinking with his above average brain, he was thinking with his heart. It had been broken by those closest to him and very nearly torn to shreds in Afghanistan. He had opened his damaged heart up to a lot of people since becoming the Iron Man and he didn’t want to fail them by showing how utterly broken he felt.

            So he went back to work after making himself a pot of coffee and reminding JARVIS to force him to sleep after another seventy-two hours had passed.


End file.
